Here's a letter to the editor

[conuly]

claiming that there is nothing sexist with the phrase "manned" tables (spacecraft, vehicles, etc) because in this case "manned" comes from Latin manus, so there.

First of all, that etymology is false. False, false, false. Man (v) comes from man (n) in exactly the path we all imagine. And I know, because unlike this person, I actually bothered to look it up.

Secondly, it doesn't freaking matter. "Manning" a table certainly sounds like it might be sexist, we have an easy substitute in the words "staffing" or "working", and that's good enough reason to switch.

I'm strongly tempted to write my own letter to the editor rebutting this letter to the editor, which of course itself is a rebuttal.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

if you do, point readers to etymonline so they can check your work and also prevent their own future embarrassment at getting things like this wrong 😈

[conuly]

I would if I were inclined to be nice. Since I'm not, I'll just say they could've looked this one up in literally any dictionary.

[alexseanchai]

valid

[moon_custafer]

Even if that were the etymology, there’s a certain... I-don’t-know-what to arguments that go “If you proles knew Latin, like I do, you wouldn’t take offence.”

[conuly]

Agreed.

[alexseanchai]

I mean we've pretty much agreed not to use a particular word synonymous with "stingy" and etymologically unrelated to any Romance language's word for "black", because to use that word is to dance right up to a line US society agrees the other side of the line is racist behavior, only to go "I'm not touching you!" like a smartass eight-year-old sibling. There's nothing about the Germanic etymology that's racist, the irritating sibling is not in fact touching you, and both the irritating sibling and the person choosing not to say "miserly" know exactly what they're doing—they're just loudly claiming plausible deniability about it.

[conuly]

That is 100% the example I thought of and decided not to spell out.

[sovay]

Even if that were the etymology, there’s a certain... I-don’t-know-what to arguments that go “If you proles knew Latin, like I do, you wouldn’t take offence.”

From a person who didn't know Latin! As a person who knows Latin, I'm offended by that!

[conuly]

Well, they didn't know the etymology of this word. Their proposed etymology was from manus, as in working by hand, which is the same root for our word manufacture. It's not horribly implausible, which is why I took a few minutes to confirm it was bunk. (But even if the etymology was correct, the reasoning that, therefore, the usage isn't sexist is still fallacious.)

[siderea]

Oy, waitaminute. That's my all-time favorite argument against "'CIS'? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? WHO CAME UP WITH THAT? WELL I DON'T LIKE IT, I THINK IT'S UGLY, WHY DO WE HAVE TO USE IT?"

[kengr]

Oh, you haven't run into the lunatic fringe of the TERFs who claim "cis-" is derived from "-cise" and therefore trans folks are indicating our hatred of non-trans folks by using the term?

[moon_custafer]

Yeah, I was a little hesitant, because the argument-from-etymology can be used to punch up or down (alexseanchai above alludes to the plainest example of using it to punch down, the one I was going to reference). Letter-writer feels more on the down side; though at least they don’t seem to be using man as a verb as often as possible in conversations, just to troll people.

[kaffy_r]

I'll be over here, rolling my eyes so hard that I might just throw myself off my chair.

[conuly]

Oh, no, don't do that. Throw them off a chair instead.

[dewline]

"Crewing" works, too, unless there's aspects to the verb that I haven't learned yet.

And there's a Neko Case song, slightly rude in lyrics towards the end, that you might like for this too. It's called..."Man".

[conuly]

Crewing isn't bad.

[adrian_turtle]

I don't think you can use "crew" for an individual, but it works really well for a team of any race or gender. A ship has a crew, which is why NASA uses the word. I see why they don't say "staffed" and "unstaffed." A project with no staff has nobody working on it. A project with no crew has a lot of robots and people at JPL.

[sovay]

there is nothing sexist with the phrase "manned" tables (spacecraft, vehicles, etc) because in this case "manned" comes from Latin manus

Oh, my God, write a letter to whoever wrote that letter, because that letter is so wrong.

[conuly]

I am so tempted. My real question is if I should pointedly mention that the publication should never have published this letter without doing the cursory 30 seconds of fact-checking known as "cracking a dictionary". THEY COULD HAVE GOOGLED IT.

[calimac]

I've even seen the argument that usages like "chairman" aren't sexist because they refer to the position, not the person. Say what? Admittedly, I haven't seen that argument very recently.

[conuly]

That's at least marginally less ridiculous than "but chair sounds stupid!"

[hilarita]

Even NASA talks about crewed spaceflight these days. If one's example about space is contradicting NASA's own usage, I feel that one ought to rethink one's life choices.

Obviously this is a letter in green ink from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

[hudebnik]

I've always sorta liked "humanned", but that's not an already-accepted practice, while "crewed" and "staffed" are.

[conuly]

I believe in this case - not having seen the original letter, just this rebuttal - the sense was manning tables, as in waitressing. Waitering? Serving? I don't even... what IS the correct verb here? Is it waiting? It's gotta be, right?

[cynthia1960]

Applause.